Yet another interesting point is brought out by the muster book of the _Royal Sovereign_. We have been told how Collingwood, in the middle of the fighting, commended a “black man” for his straight shooting. Apparently the man was a West Indian. There were no fewer than seventy foreigners and aliens on board Collingwood’s flagship at Trafalgar, according to the ship’s books, the list being thus made up: Twenty-four Americans (hailing for the most part from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Jersey); seven Dutchmen—Dirks and Franz’s and Hendriks and Rutters—from Friesland, Delft, Maestricht, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam; one Belgian, from Brussels; three Portuguese from the Azores and Lisbon; four Prussians and one Pole from Dantzic; two Danes, two Frenchmen, one Norwegian, one Venetian, one Neapolitan, one Maltese, seven Lascars—two of them entered as “Jonan” and “Lowannah”—from the East Indies; two Malays from Batavia, entered as “Soloman” and “Ballee”; one from Bengal, one from Madras, a third Malay entered as “George”; fifteen West Indians, from St. Kitts, Barbados, Jamaica, and from Berbice, in British Guiana. * * * * * Two interesting letters from the _Royal Sovereign_ may serve to conclude our narrative. One was from a Hampshire lad, one of those fighting below at the guns. It runs thus:— “Honoured Father,—This comes to tell you I am alive and hearty except three fingers; but that’s not much, it might have been my head. I told brother Tom I should like to see a greadly [_sic_] battle, and I have seen one, and we have peppered the Combined rarely; and for the matter of that, they fought us pretty tightish for French and Spanish. Three of our mess are killed, and four more of us winged. But to tell you the truth of it, when the game began, I wished myself at Warnborough with my plough again; but when they had given us one duster, and I found myself snug and tight, I ... set to in good earnest, and thought no more about being killed than if I were at Murrell Green Fair, and I was presently as busy and as black as a collier. How my fingers got knocked overboard I don’t know, but off they are, and I never missed them till I wanted them. You see, by my writing, it was my left hand, so I can write to you and fight for my King yet. We have taken a rare parcel of ships, but the wind is so rough we cannot bring them home, else I should roll in money, so we are busy smashing ’em, and blowing ’em up wholesale.